When you’ve got the fish in the boat or back at the dock or at your camper or home, a vital process begins.

You get the fish ready for cooking.

It is not a mysterious process but is something that takes practice and careful hands. Most Arkansas anglers use the filleting technique. You take a very sharp knife with a thin and flexible blade, then you slice the meat away from the backbone. Sure, there is more to filleting than those few words, but that’s the basic idea.

Special knives are made for filleting, and these can run from inexpensive to high dollar. They fall into four types — manual and three forms of electrically operated instruments.

With a manual filleting knife and with practice, you can fillet an average size crappie, for instance, in less than a minute. The usual procedure is to make a diagonal cut just behind the head and gill to the backbone, turn the knife on its side and cut along the backbone to near the tail, but leave a bit of skin at the tail. This cut will include whacking through the ribs. When you’ve cut to the tail, flip this slab of meat over then carefully slide the blade between skin and meat back to your original cut. Next, you use the point of the knife to trim out the ribs in an arc pattern.

The first time you try filleting, you’ll quickly see the importance of a thin, flexible blade.

With electric knives, the process is the same except you have power assistance.

Electric filleting knives can be the ones you also use for slicing a ham or carving a turkey. It can be the type that runs off household current, 110-120 volt, as long as the blade is reasonably thin.

The electric knife can be battery powered so you can use it away from a plug-in.

And the electric knife can be 12-volt powered, meaning running off a boat battery or plugged into the cigarette lighter in your vehicle. Many of these come with wires and alligator clips that attach to battery posts.

Take a plastic or wooden board along with you in the boat, and your catch can be filleted on the spot. It is wise to keep the scraps — heads and carcasses — in a bucket until the outing is over in case an officer wants to verify what kind of fish and how many you caught.

With manual filleting knives, sharpening is essential. They have to be sharp to function. With electric knives, many with serrated twin blades, sharpening isn’t as necessary. But most anglers using electric knives have a manual knife too. This is used to trim out the ribs, although an electric knife can handle this task too — if you are careful and keep the tip from biting into your board.

When you get into filleting fish, a natural question is about the meat that is left behind. Or if a family member or friend looks on, you’re apt to get something like, “Look at all that meat you are wasting.”

Yes, some meat is missed in the filleting process, but it is a small, really small, percentage. Forget about it. The alternative is to scale the fish and prepare it whole, and this is what you are getting away from by choosing filleting.

Filleting takes practice. It takes a sensitive touch with your hands because you feel your way with the knife as it cuts through the fish. This touch is especially delicate when filleting bream. A little misstep, and you’ve whacked through the backbone or cut the fillet away from the tail prematurely. No big deal. You can correct the error.

Keep your filleting knives clean, whether they are manual or electric. Washing the blades immediately after use is the way to go. It is much more difficult when the residue on them has dried.

A suggestion, if you are new to fish filleting, is to watch someone do it. Yes, if it is an experienced person doing the filleting, he or she may make the job seem quick and easy.

It can be for you also. Just put in the necessary practice to gain this experience. That starts with going out and catching some fish.

Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas’ best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at